Simon Fraser University researchers are using a new approach to brain imaging that could improve how drugs are prescribed to treat Parkinson’s disease.  

The new study, published in the journal Movement Disorders, looks at why levodopa – the main drug used in dopamine replacement therapy – is sometimes less effective in patients. 

The drug is typically prescribed to help reduce the movement symptoms associated with the neurodegenerative disorder.  

While it is effective in improving symptoms for the vast majority of patients, not everyone experiences the same level of benefit.  

In order to find out why this is the case, an SFU collaboration with researchers in Sweden has used magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology to determine how the drug affects signals in the brain.  

Prior studies have shown veterans are particularly at risk of dying by opioid overdose and the possibility of that occurring has been rising steadily over the past two decades. From 2010-2019, there was a 61.2% increase in risk of overdose death among male veterans. Interestingly, this increased risk was not observed among female veterans, despite rates of opioid use disorder (OUD) rising more quickly among women than men in the general population. Racial disparities in opioid overdose deaths are also prominent with a significant increase in death due to opioids among all racial and ethnic minority veterans, except American Indian or Alaskan Native veterans.

Given increases in opioid overdose rates and policy changes expanding access to medications for OUD during the COVID-19 pandemic, BU and VA researchers sought to understand how the opioid overdose epidemic impacted veterans with opioid use disorder. In their new study, they found female veterans and veterans from racial and ethnic minority groups were at higher risk of dying from an opioid overdose than other veterans.